Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday July 29, 2014 @08:48AM
from the since-you're-here-anyhow dept.

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative.""

Who is surfing to such sites without AdBlocker and NoScript shields up

I basically came here to say exactly this. Adblock Plus, NoScript, Ghostery, FlashBlock...whenever I browse the internet without them (eg, on a friend's computer, or when doing tech support, or when re-installing an OS) I have a moment of "...the heck are these abominations?" before I remember that, oh right, the internet has ads.

"The initiative will make use of technology provided by Project Sunblock - a firm used by major brands to stop adverts appearing alongside questionable content such as pirated material or pornography."

"Neither the police or Project Sunblock [are paying the website in question to display the police message." --

Exactly what i though reading "has started placing banner advertisements on websites"... "which will appear instead of paid-for ads". Does that mean the City of London police - whatever that is - has taken upon themselves above the law and are essentially cybercriminals? So they con the sites as well as someone who has actually paid for the ad space?

So whi gets sued when they place one of these on a site that is completely legitimate? I hear that in Europe, slander and libel cases can be won even if the information is true but the intent was to harm a reputation. Clearly this would be that.

Sure I do.. I mean the police would never accuse someone of something that wasn't true, they are the police after all. They fight crime and the bad guys so why wouldn't I believe that the legitimate site isn't piracy site or otherwise involved in illegal activities when I see their banner adds on it. Why wouldn't I close my browser window and never purchase anything from them or view their content again. Why wouldn't I tell all my friends that the site is illegal and the cops are busting people going to it?

Apparently the rule "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply to "websites", as evidenced by the city of london police.

This police bunch, it is worth noting, is the police force of the "square mile", which is pretty much run by private corporations, making this essentially a private police force in government-backed livery. It is not strange that it would be acting "proactive" and "innovative" and whatnot in furtherance of private corporate goals.

This police bunch, it is worth noting, is the police force of the "square mile"

Indeed. To clarify, this is specifically the police force of the small area confusingly titled the "City of London" [wikipedia.org] (AKA the "square mile"), i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

which is pretty much run by private corporations, making this essentially a private police force in government-backed livery. It is not strange that it would be acting "proactive" and "innovative" and whatnot in furtherance of private corporate goals.

Please check the official documents - the City of London Police force is run by the voting wards.... 21 of 25 wards are run by corporate voters.... 4 of 21 wards are run by actual residents. Oh and the 32,000 corporate voters out number the 7,000 residential voters.

PS In the UK it is the only local council that has a dedicated officer in parliment to remind parliment not to infringe upon the City of London and the only local council since 1969 that still allows for corporations to be

Maybe that's why you don't often see the "Corporate Police" as a means of Corporations to enforce their will through Free Trade Agreements (which *trump* the democratic national laws) and also *enforce* these laws on the public in UK Sci-Fi movies: they already have it.

London... it sucks the life (jobs, investment, infrastructure) out of the rest of the country, which is only partly compensated for by the large tax revenue it provides

Not really. Tax revenue from London subsidises the rest of the country. But, it's a load of bankers stealing money -- it would be more accurate to say they suck money out of the whole world. Perhaps the City of London should investigate the numerous tax-avoiding companies headquartered there...

This police bunch, it is worth noting, is the police force of the "square mile"

Indeed. This is specifically the police force of the City of London [wikipedia.org] "square mile", i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

which is pretty much run by private corporations, making this essentially a private police force in government-backed livery. It is not strange that it would be acting "proactive" and "innovative" and whatnot in furtherance of private corporate goals.

Unless they have some special powers, I suppose the police will have to pay for those ads, just like the regular advertisers do. This would result in the police actively sponsoring these allegedly illegal sites. Can have interesting political repercussions.

Unless they have some special powers, I suppose the police will have to pay for those ads, just like the regular advertisers do. This would result in the police actively sponsoring these allegedly illegal sites. Can have interesting political repercussions.

You used the word "unless" correctly. So the police isn't going to pay. And who would be suing them?

Don't think that will be the case as they would just go down the route of getting it blocked. I think from reading a couple of articles about this is that they are trying to get as many add networks on-board to blacklist these sites and only pass on their logos etc - without paying for them. They are putting the pressure on the ad networks rather than the sites...

I still see a problem with it though - sites will just move to other ad networks who aren't being blackmailed by the city of London Police.

I think the take home message here is that in London internet users somehow ended up receiving relevant ads from well known brands.

I seem to have nothing but crap. Right now I'm staring at an advert for a phone from a brand which is virtually unheard of (though quite prevailent, Huawei), and some company called Brocade who have something to do with bridges from what I can tell?

Huawei is one of China's main phone manufacturers. The brand is quite well known around here, and apparently they try to expand globally. Their advertising is probably to create brand awareness in other parts of the world, such as where you happen to live - and considering your comment, they're succeeding.

I know who they are, but the brand has zero recognition where I live. That is despite a large portion of the population having their products. For the most part here they produce all the 3G / 4G dongles that every other person has but they are all re-branded.

Also the advert was for their smartphone which isn't sold here so I would say they aren't succeeding even in the slightest.

Giving how much tax money all these corporations are paying, with absolutely no dodging of any taxes, it's really great to see the police devote so much time and resources to protecting these companies' revenue streams. Almost all the murderers, rapists, and thieves have been locked up. There's very little to no fraud going on in any industries, especially the financial sector who has a primary hub in London. We should definitely cheer on the police in this latest endeavour of serving and protecting corpora

This is the City of London Police. The City of London is a square-mile independent state within a city. It is outside the control of parliament, owned by the banks, who have most of the voting rights within the organisation of the state, and the City of London Police is its private police force, not to be confused with the Metropolitan Police whose remit is to catch the criminals in the rest of London.

Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic

No one confuses Rapidshare for BMG's official site. People go there specifically to download pirated content, full stop. Seeing police ads might scare a few people with the paranoia of thinking "the man" has caught them, but the other 99% of visitors will just thank the police for subsidizing their favorite warez sites.

Truly pathetic, Boys in Blue (Hmm, do Bobbies wear blue?)

The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising.

No one confuses Rapidshare for BMG's official site. People go there specifically to download pirated content, full stop. Seeing police ads might scare a few people with the paranoia of thinking "the man" has caught them, but the other 99% of visitors will just thank the police for subsidizing their favorite warez sites.

I know that this is slashdot, and that you therefore feel justified in being an ignorant idiot and spouting off without RTFAing, and you're in quite a bit of company: lots of other idiots are saying the same stupid shit you're saying. But the article makes it clear that "Neither the police or Project Sunblock are paying the website in question to display the police message". They're just suppressing the banner display, and displaying a police message instead.

But the article makes it clear that "Neither the police or Project Sunblock are paying the website in question to display the police message". They're just suppressing the banner display, and displaying a police message instead.

Yep, I made a mistake. I presumed that the police would know better than to enter into a conspiracy to commit outright theft of service and libel in their efforts to appease the recording industry. One crime doesn't justify another. Mea culpa.

Would you care to respond to that, or would you prefer to latch on to a typo somewhere in this post?

Well, you're right, I was in full dick mode. I'm even sorry about it, albeit admittedly only slightly. I apologize for how, but not what I said. Yeah well, that's the best you're getting out of me this morning.

Nobody expects the piracy sites to be legit. But a lot of people think that there are so many of them that their activity can go unnoticed. Those people are about to get an awakening, if they even take the banners seriously.

No one should confuse The City of London police [wikipedia.org] for an actual police force as most people imagine them, either. They are a territorial force responsible for a tiny area of Greater London as a whole that measuring a little over square mile and consists of mostly financial institutions and only a few thousand actual residents. Still, owing to their location in The City, they have developed quite a reputation for fraud investigations and also incorporate a division dealing with Intellectual Property [wikipedia.org], so other than the jurisdictional issues of interfering with websites (or at least the ads displayed on them) that are most likely hosted outside The City they actually do have the means and backing to look into this kind of thing.

So close on the color! Blue is the color worn by police in London... except for the CoLP, the ones responsible for this action. That's because the City (Not London, but a tiny district within it) is, for historical reasons, actually a semi-independant mini-state and as such get to have their own police force that is seperate from the rest of the UK police. Their color scheme is red, not blue.

As the City is the financial district, the CoLP have a strong focus on the type of crime that happens in a financial

One thing I'd like to point out is that the City of London Police are not the same thing as the British Metropolitan Police. This was something that came up in an article a few months ago where the City of London Police were fighting against piracy. They're basically an area within London that has existed for hundreds of years under corporate rule.

I figured you'd follow the links and actually take some time to learn about the topic, so I don't think it's disingenuous of me to have left things where I did. Had you taken the time to read through the links, it would be apparent that the everyday sort of corporate management arrangement you're painting it as is not at all representative of the reality here, and that the police force is run not just by the Corporation, but also by the corporations. To quote from near the top of the page that you'd have re

I admit I did not read your links, because I have seen this same nonsense theory pop up on/. numerous times before, and have read those links in the past.

The link and explanation RE the Common Council is interesting, thank you. Still, I only see evidence that this allows the corporations to have more influence over the City of London Police, it still is not the same thing as governing them.

When people make that claim, they make it seem like rest of laws in the country have no influence on the CoL police, a

Do you have any information on arrestable offenses or crimes in The City of London that could not be made by the Metropolitan Police Force?

I do not. I have no firsthand info. I've heard some off-hand comments from Londoners and looked into the topic yesterday before I started posting here, so it's likely you have a broader knowledge than I do on the subject. Even so, I'll point out that the arrestable offenses in the City don't need to be different for a corporate influence to be at play.

Because they control the vote, they can dictate public policy, but, as you mentioned, they must do so within the bounds of the laws of the country. As such, w

That's not true in practice, their authority seems definitely national, possibly even global in practice.

They've been engaged in raids well outside of the City of London including in my jurisdiction up here in Yorkshire. In fact, I took advantage of the fact we now have police crime commissioners to ask why my local tax payment via council tax to the police was being used to fund the interests of the City of London when the whole point of having police crime commissioners was to give local residents more of

Websites by themselves aren't "illegal". Using those terms gives undue legitimacy to copyright maximalists. What is meant here by "illegal" is that they host content which may be infringing on copyright.

Seems likely, and if so the ad serving network would have to cooperate in allowing sunblocks JS to be served to client browsers. I can only home the Met's and Cities finest have a 100% accurate blocklist, because it only takes one high profile false-positive and a suit for loss of earnings due to illegal seizure of assets to drain sunblock dry.

Over time you link banner in with a cookie, flash cookie and database cookie folders.
ie as with the first gen flash cookies you get a a unique ID and can be tracked online for a while.
What was once online marketing activities in 100KB deep in a browser is now todays police work.

While there's an opportunity to debate the good and bad of it, tapping into the advertising thread of web sites is novel to me. The legality question is similar to what WOT [mywot.com] does, right? The plugin warns me about a site's reputation but I do have the option to proceed.

Actually you are right, UK and Luxembourg are the only exemptions in Europe, apparently. Nevertheless, I dont know why are ISPs and forces of order working for free for the media conglomerates, but we fully well know who foots the bill.

it's silly for the state to jump in and spend so much time, effort, and money on what is essentially a failure of business to demonstrate to people that their content is worth purchasing. free market rules, y'all

The gov cares as the pay TV monopoly zones see having their wealth protected from all other providers.
You pay for months of pay tv to enjoy a new show per season. You dont get to enjoy each show from another nations computer company in near real time.
So expect to see a lot of pay tv efforts locally and internationally to protect each networked thiefdom .

It's the crime of intercepting data involving the Internet Protocol and modifying or blocking data. Because we as a civilized world finally came to realize one of the greatest crimes against humanity was manipulating or censoring what others say or think and the Internet is clearly a global medium that represents humanity's great communication, inter-connectivity breakthrough.

Sorry, I'm just kidding. This is all about money. And fictitious, government-created property. "Intellectual" property: because

The City of London Corporation is outside the control of parliament, and the representatives of 21 of its 25 wards are entirely voted for by corporations, not individual voters who live there. The Corporation has a representative called the Rememberancer who sits behind the Speaker of the House of Commons, presumably with the job of 'remembrancing' the commoners about who's really in charge.